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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 342 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
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Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:28:57 -0800 (PST)
From: "harold@hallikainen.com" <harold@hallikainen.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <cc65e964-dc45-417d-9dcd-c755f64f676f@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>
On Dec 29, 6:34 am, Sam Spade <s...@coldmail.com> wrote:
> I have Vonage since its inception. It is used for my consulting
> service and also for all toll outgoing calls for my wife and
> myself. (our AT&T wireline phone is toll blocked.) We live in the
> 949 area code of coastal Southern California. But, my primary
> Vonage number is in area code 202 in Washington, DC, thus a
> cross-nation FEX line of sorts, with outward WAAS thrown in.
>
> Think what this would have cost in the legacy days. Somewhere
> around $4,000 or $5,000 a month in 1970 dollars.
>
> Vonage also includes toll-free to Canada and 60 foreign countries
> (and counting).
>
> My wife can now call her good friend in Kyoto, Japan as casually as
> she calls someone two blocks away.
This is indeed impressive. So, where are the cost savings that allow
such dramatically lower costs?
On the FEX, I guess that in the 1970s, they would have nailed down a
circuit across the country for your use. That would indeed be
expensive. They could have brought up the circuit only when needed
(like an 800 number) for substantial savings.
Between yesterday and today, of course, bandwidth costs have been
dramatically reduced. Data compression also allows lower bitrates for
voice. POTS has access to the lower bandwidth costs and could, I
suppose, use compression. POTS, of course, uses circuit switched
instead of packet switched, so the circuit is dead in one direction
about half the time (remember TASI?). So, there is some additional
cost savings there. But even then, POTS costs are considerably above
Vonage or other VoIP services. Is the difference in bandwidth usage
(dedicated 64kbps in each direction for POTS versus bursts for VoIP)?
Is it regulatory? Why the big difference? In both cases, we're just
transmitting bits.
Harold
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:16:30 -0800
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <hhg8uh$nks$1@news.eternal-september.org>
harold@hallikainen.com wrote:
> On Dec 29, 6:34 am, Sam Spade <s...@coldmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have Vonage since its inception. It is used for my consulting
>> service and also for all toll outgoing calls for my wife and
>> myself. (our AT&T wireline phone is toll blocked.) We live in the
>> 949 area code of coastal Southern California. But, my primary
>> Vonage number is in area code 202 in Washington, DC, thus a
>> cross-nation FEX line of sorts, with outward WAAS thrown in.
>>
>> Think what this would have cost in the legacy days. Somewhere
>> around $4,000 or $5,000 a month in 1970 dollars.
>>
>> Vonage also includes toll-free to Canada and 60 foreign countries
>> (and counting).
>>
>> My wife can now call her good friend in Kyoto, Japan as casually as
>> she calls someone two blocks away.
>
> This is indeed impressive. So, where are the cost savings that allow
> such dramatically lower costs?
>
> On the FEX, I guess that in the 1970s, they would have nailed down a
> circuit across the country for your use. That would indeed be
> expensive. They could have brought up the circuit only when needed
> (like an 800 number) for substantial savings.
>
> Between yesterday and today, of course, bandwidth costs have been
> dramatically reduced. Data compression also allows lower bitrates for
> voice. POTS has access to the lower bandwidth costs and could, I
> suppose, use compression. POTS, of course, uses circuit switched
> instead of packet switched, so the circuit is dead in one direction
> about half the time (remember TASI?). So, there is some additional
> cost savings there. But even then, POTS costs are considerably above
> Vonage or other VoIP services. Is the difference in bandwidth usage
> (dedicated 64kbps in each direction for POTS versus bursts for VoIP)?
> Is it regulatory? Why the big difference? In both cases, we're just
> transmitting bits.
>
> Harold
There is [such] a huge amount of surplus bandwidth that is costs
almost nothing; companies like Level III which sell to other carriers
have huge networks that, because of the way business is, are not
getting used, so the price goes down. Ten years ago they built
several hubs, I worked on the one in LA and from what I have seen it
is less then 50% in use.
I have unlimited long distance and never really make it pay, but it
had brought down the costs of other services that are bundled.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, Inc., A Rot in Hell. Co.
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:09:48 -0800
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <LJT_m.1$oa2.0@newsfe01.iad>
Steven wrote:
>
> I have unlimited long distance and never really make it pay, but it
> had brought down the costs of other services that are bundled.
>
Today, if an AT$T wireline customer in California wants just Caller ID,
it's an astounding $9 per month.
Vonage bundles it, and many other features, in their basic unlimited
service, as do other VOIPs and the wireless carriers.
In California I suspect the AT&T wireline unit (Pacific Bell) must be
hurting these days.
Is wireline going to self-destruct?
***** Moderator's Note *****
That's a very good question. When I worked at N.E.T., I would have
laughed at the idea, but I wonder if the baby bells, or in fact any
of the ILECs, can adapt to the changing telecom world.
The Engineer in me wants to predict that the system will reach
equilibrium when the ILECs lose enough customers to force them to cut
rates, but that's not likely. I grow more and more convinced that
wire-line service will fade to the point where there's not enough
revenue to maintain it.
You might think that business users, who are still mostly in the
wire-line camp, will demand wire-line because they depend on their
existing phone systems and networks so heavily. That dependence,
however, will lead them to seek and adopt alternatives to wire-line,
such as VoIP, because wire-line costs will rise as home users abandon
it for cellular. It will become a vicious circle, with decreasing
revenues driving lower maintence and higher adoption of alternatives.
At some point, there will have to be another political debate about
the value of universal service: remember that it has always been
subsidized by high-profit offerings, and that such offerings are
facing competition from more agile, lower-margin CLECs. This comes at
the same time that demand for long-distance is decreasing (due, I
think, to email use), and also at the same time that business users
become more aware of viable alternative services which offer dramatic
cost savings over traditional circuit-switched long-distance.
The end result is that ILECs will be very tempted to allow wire-line
to wither on the vine, favoring high-profit cellular users and "gotta
have it" business customers, both of whom can be served by the robust
infrastructures of the cities, while low-profit, high-maintenance
ex-urban copper paths are left to rust.
That's my 2¢.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: 30 Dec 2009 19:11:52 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <20091230191152.75867.qmail@simone.iecc.com>
>This is indeed impressive. So, where are the cost savings that allow
>such dramatically lower costs?
Fiber offers multiple orders of magnitude more bandwidth than anything
made of copper, and modern computer technology makes switches vastly
smaller and cheaper than the early electronic switches.
This has nothing to do with VoIP. The long distance service on my
landline charges 10 cpm to Japan and 5 cpm to most of Europe, and I
could find better rates if I used it to make a lot of international
calls. (I also have a Lingo VoIP phone that includes Europe in the
monthly minute bundle.) My prepaid Tracfone lets me call Japan and
Europe for the same 10 cpm they charge for domestic calls.
R's,
John
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:54:31 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <pan.2009.12.30.21.54.28.468577@myrealbox.com>
On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:28:57 -0800, harold@hallikainen.com wrote:
..........
> Between yesterday and today, of course, bandwidth costs have been
> dramatically reduced. Data compression also allows lower bitrates
> for voice. POTS has access to the lower bandwidth costs and could, I
> suppose, use compression. POTS, of course, uses circuit switched
> instead of packet switched, so the circuit is dead in one direction
> about half the time (remember TASI?). So, there is some additional
> cost savings there. But even then, POTS costs are considerably above
> Vonage or other VoIP services. Is the difference in bandwidth usage
> (dedicated 64kbps in each direction for POTS versus bursts for
> VoIP)? Is it regulatory? Why the big difference? In both cases,
> we're just transmitting bits.
How long has it been since the actual "wire" infrastructure was the
major cost component in voice calls?
The billing component these days on legacy comms must be just about
the biggest cost that is incurred by a provider.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:52:39 EST
From: wesrock@aol.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <64f.179b9b43.386d4fd7@aol.com>
In a message dated 12/30/2009 6:17:56 PM Central Standard Time,
diespammers@killspammers.com writes:
> There is [such] a huge amount of surplus bandwidth that is costs
> almost nothing; companies like Level III which sell to other
> carriers have huge networks that, because of the way business is,
> are not getting used, so the price goes down.
My original home town of Perry, Oklahoma, is the home of Ditch Witch
and they were selling their machines like mad a few years ago during
the fiber rush. They the industry discovered they had more fiber than
they could use for many years, much of it idle, and demand for Ditch
Witches suddently fell off and Ditch Witch put over 1,000 employees on
furlough.
Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com
wleathus@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:44:34 -0600 (CST)
From: jsw <jsw@ivgate.omahug.org>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
Message-ID: <200912302144.nBULiYP1086289@ivgate.omahug.org>
For a while, 712-366 and 402-359 (Council Bluffs - Manawa and
Valley, NE) were hosted remotely off of the 84th St. office in
Omaha and were indeed toll calls from each other. At the time
they were both toll-free from 84th. St. subs but true toll
calls, charged by the minute, between the two.
A couple years ago the calling area was expanded and the
402-359 prefix was added to the Omaha rate center, so now they
are a local call between them.
I also vaguely remember that the Floral Park CO, very close
to the Queens-Nassau border hosted (then) 212-343 as well as
some 516 prefixes. I forget the exact details, as there was
'zone calling' in effect at the time, but I do remember that
(then) 212-343 was a local call from me, but some of the
prefixes out of that same office were a more expensive call
from me at the time. This was early 1970s, and I'm straining
to dust off rusty memory cells to remember the exact details.
IIRC, Floral Park was 5 Xbar at the time.
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End of The Telecom digest (7 messages)
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